


per ardua ad astra

by protect_the_fishboy



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Angst, F/F, Gen, Heartbroken Everyone tbh, Heartbroken Greg, Heartbroken Pearl, Hurt/Comfort, Pining Pearl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 05:58:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4210644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protect_the_fishboy/pseuds/protect_the_fishboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even after she finds the note, Pearl hopes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	per ardua ad astra

Even after she finds the note, Pearl hopes.

These legs aren’t fast enough, it’d be more efficient to turn into a flying thing or a running thing or anything less fragile than this, but that’s not what Pearl’s thinking about. She drops the letter and runs, trembling in a way that’s foreign to her. Her sword is in her hand, though she doesn’t remember drawing it. She leaves whatever questions Garnet and Amethyst are calling after her splintered and unfinished, every inch of her _RoseRoseRoseRose_ , and that name, that other name, burning through her like a eulogy, _StevenStevenSteven_. The tide is coming in, slapping against the cliffs, sounding like screams. Pearl sympathizes.

 _I know that this will cause you pain, and that I regret more than anything._ Rose’s personal calligraphy, smudged and smelling of rose water. Healing tears shed for a wound that hasn’t happened yet. _Take care of him. He’s part me—the best part. The most important part._

When Pearl makes it to the shore, the breath that she doesn’t need coming in shallow pants, all that’s left is a rose quartz nestled in the sand.

That night, Pearl cuts her hair.

                                                                                           _______________

It’s not Rose that emerges from her gem, but a boy, chubby cheeked and gurgling and looking so much like Greg but smelling so much like Rose that it hurts. Greg goes white, then red. It’s not Pearl that breaks. It’s Greg. And it’s Pearl who’s left rocking the infant child, whispering reassurances into his full head of hair when he begins to cry, chubby starfish fingers reaching in the direction that his father just hurried out of the room.

It’s Pearl who sits down to write a list, the child still on her lap. He shifts sleepily, little puffs of warm air stuttering over Pearl’s cheek every few seconds. When Pearl looks at him, he looks back like he knows her. For just a second, he looks like Rose.

Humans have needs, human children even moreso. She thinks of tiny clothes. She thinks of human food. She thinks of all the things Rose babbled about before—

She thinks of Rose’s smile.

She starts to write.

 _Rose saw the beauty in everything_.

She marks out _Rose_ and writes _your mother._

She marks out _your mother_ and writes _my friend_.

She marks out _friend_ and doesn’t write anything else.

                                                                                       __________________

 

On his third day of life, Steven stops looking at Pearl like he knows her and starts looking at her like he loves her.

Greg hasn’t managed to fully come into the same room as Steven yet, but he stands in the doorway and smiles as Pearl, Amethyst, and Garnet surround the child, mesmerized at every little stretch of the limbs that are as foreign to him as they are to them. There is an undercurrent of pain every time Amethyst morphs into a cat or a tiny train or a whale _, Amethyst, we don’t have room for a whale in this house, you shapeshift back into your natural form this instant,_ just to coax one of those magic giggles from baby Steven’s lips, all pink and full and _Rose_. Pearl smiles at Steven’s laughter and crinkles her nose at his diapers and passes him off to Garnet when the various goos native to human children become too much for her.

The thing is, Greg will not touch his child.

Pearl wraps around herself at night, ear pressed to her side of the baby monitor that she doesn’t need, listening to Steven’s tiny exhales and the sounds he makes when he dreams. She has been reading from Greg’s device, the main purpose of which seems to be storing information. She gets impatient with the tiny squares on which the human characters are printed. It’s like a piano, except it isn’t beautiful. The device says that infants cannot dream this early in life, but Pearl does not agree. Besides, this is not a normal human child. This is Rose’s child.

And that is the crux, isn’t it? No matter how many small smiles Steven’s antics coax from her, Pearl feels like something living and important has been ripped from her chest, replaced with a writhing and clawed animal. Her kind was not meant to be heartbroken.

Sometimes, Steven will cry. Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl all rush to his little bassinet, but it is Pearl that Steven reaches for, it is Pearl that Steven locks his chubby fists around as his hitching sobs cease. It is at these times that Pearl wonders if Steven’s dreams are nightmares.

(It is at these times that Pearl thinks—no, knows—that Steven is not an ordinary child.)

Pearl forgets. Pearl is not compassionate by nature. She forgets that Amethyst and Garnet and Greg—they all have their own pains.

She’s cleaning, sorting the baubles that they’ve bought for Steven ( _no, Amethyst, we aren’t buying him a machete_ ) both alphabetically and by color when she hears wailing from the general direction of Amethyst’s room. Steven’s wailing. She drops the backpack shaped like a cheeseburger that she is holding (Pearl: _Garnet, what on earth is a baby going to do with that_ ; Garnet: _I have a feeling that he’ll need it someday_ ) and _runs_ , because she will be fast enough this time.

Amethyst’s room ordinarily makes her shudder in horror, but not this time, because this time she is running, this time she’s drawn her sword again, but then there is Steven on the floor giggling and Amethyst sitting very, very still.

“What on _earth_ are you thinking, bringing him in here? I heard crying,” Pearl spits, broken glass and bullet shells between the words, and Amethyst looks up blankly, a cut oozing silvery blood on her palm.

Pearl scoops up the child, shushing his sound of discontent. “Amethyst, what happened?” She tries to soften her words.

“I wanted to see if he had healing tears,” Amethyst mumbles, letting her hand drop to her side. “I didn’t hurt him. All you have to do to make him cry is look sad.”

 _That isn’t hard, to look sad,_ Amethyst doesn’t say.

 _That can’t be right, because we haven’t looked anything but in months,_ Pearl doesn’t reply.

Amethyst looks up. “I wanted to see if she was still in there.”

 _She’s not_ , Amethyst doesn’t have to say.

                                                                                       ____________________

_here is the deepest secret nobody knows_   
_(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows_   
_higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)_   
_and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart_   
  
_I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)_

-e.e. cummings

______________________

Greg has come far in Steven’s few years of life. He tells Steven stories about his mother, exaggerated tales that can’t come close to doing her justice. How can a child comprehend that his mother saved the world?

(How can he comprehend that he is all that is left of that person?)

Greg is adamant that the child must attend school. They argue.

“What will he learn in a _human_ school?” The world _school_ rolls off of Pearl’s tongue differently than it rolls off of Greg’s, brittle like other human words she’s been forced to learn.  _School. Taxes. Public liability insurance._ Other words, Steven’s words, she tries to soften. _Hug. Donut_.

 _Mom_.

“He’ll learn something. That’s the point, Pearl. History, math, science. Stuff that’ll help him get a job one day.”

“A _job?_ ” Pearl’s nose crinkles in distaste. “Steven is a _gem_ , Gregory. Will school teach him about the homeworld? About the war? Will it teach him…a-about duty? His mother?”

Greg’s eyes cut sideways to the broad window. Steven, Amethyst, and Garnet are smudges on a faraway landscape. They’re trying to show him how to skip rocks, they said, the boy propped on Amethyst’s hip while Garnet lobs boulders into the rising tide. The resulting tidal waves and earth-shattering rumbles send Steven’s excited cries echoing across the shore. Greg’s smile is sad.

“Look at him, Pearl. He may be a gem, but he’s not like you. Look at him. He’s just a little kid!”

Pearl doesn’t reply, her gaze now fixed on the portrait of Rose that hangs in their living room.  _He’s the best part. The most important part._

“Look.” Greg has softened his voice. It is a strategy that Pearl knows well. This is hardly any different than a swordfight. “I want to teach him things, too. About…about music. And love. He won’t learn those in school.”

“I don’t think love is something you are supposed to teach.”

“Would it be all that difficult to _work_ with me?”

Pearl drags her eyes away from the portrait of Rose to make grating eye contact with the human she fell in love with. For a second, she can understand what Rose saw—perhaps not in the man himself, but in his potential.

“We can send him to school. After hours, you can fill his head with bloodshed and duty and I’ll teach him how to play the fucking ukulele, okay?”

Pearl sighs. Steven is toddling up the walkway, chasing after Amethyst (who has, inexplicably, morphed into a crab), the wind snatching away his peals of laughter. He’s 5 in human years, and Pearl has never seen anything so happy to be alive.

“Okay.”

And then Steven and Amethyst and Garnet, slower and lumbering and brooding but still Garnet, are bursting through the door and Steven is clinging to Pearl’s legs all salt water and stories and Pearl is scooping him up and saying against his cheek _how do you feel about…school_ and she can see the stars in his eyes and that pretty much settles that.

 

Until it doesn’t.

It is Pearl—Pearl, not Greg—who receives the phone call, a frazzled Mrs. So-and-So on the other line, _um, are you the parent or guardian of Steven Universe, please come, there’s been a bit of an_ —and Pearl is there, Pearl hardly has to think about it, Pearl is snarling at Amethyst and Garnet to become battle ready and Amethyst is saying _wait, Pearl, maybe we should wait_ and Pearl is saying _fine, I can do it myself, Garnet you should have seen this coming_ and then she is gone.

Pearl hears him before he sees him, a trembling wail that pierces through her like…something that pierces. Pearl isn’t a poet. Pearl is a warrior.

Steven. Curled, trembling, arm cradled to his chest, wrapped in a rose-tinted protective shield drawn a second too late, the remains of a rusty monkey bar twisted and broken beside him, a cluster of children headed by a _clearly inept adult human female,_ all speaking in hushed whispers. She spares time for none of them. _Stevenstevensteven_ , she whispers, and the shield evaporates and there is just shivering 5-year-old _hurts, Pearl_ and as long as she is alive Steven is never coming to _school_ again.

He is Steven, of course, and hours later when he’s huddled in burger-print pajamas and giggling at a picture book, arm in a tiny tiny cast and tiny tiny knees littered with tiny tiny bandages (Garnet: _and a little extra_ ; Pearl: _don’t be ridiculous, Garnet, your kisses will do very little for his recovery_ ), Pearl looks at Greg and Greg looks at Pearl and finally he says “It’s hard to play ukulele with one arm” and that is the end of that.

                                                                            ______________________

 

 Steven is beset by nightmares.

Pearl has given up the baby monitor in favor of curling up in the corner of the boy’s bedroom while Garnet and Amethyst deal with the extraterrestrial beings, the rogue gems, the enchanted artifacts that used to call to her like they call to them. When Steven’s breaths become short and stuttering and broken with whimpers, that is when Pearl smooths a hand across his (warm, delicate) forehead and begins to speak (softly, carefully).

 Sometimes, he never even wakes, just settles back into slumber. Other times, his eyes slit open and he looks at Pearl sleepily for a moment before his lips tilt up and his chubby hands close on the stuffed lion he sleeps with.

              _Rose, your mother—my friend, my very best friend—saw the beauty in everything._

_Me, Steven, even in me._

_She loved flowers. She loved all living things. Sometimes I wonder if her gem was really rose quartz—she made you think she wasn’t a gem at all. She could’ve just sprung up in a field of flowers._

_Steven, she loved you more than anything. She loved you so much that she is still part of you—right now._

_Your gem—it’s right where the umbilicus would be on a human child, Steven._

_But that’s the thing! That’s why you’re a miracle. Fully human. Fully gem. I’m not sure there’s ever been anything quite like you._

_You were her last little miracle, Steven._

 

Someday, she’ll tell him these things while he is awake.

Someday she’ll say them without her voice shaking.


End file.
